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Smart Building Digital Twins for Healthcare

Where Clinical Demands Meet Decarbonization: Digital Twins Built for Healthcare

Smart Building Digital Twins for Healthcare 3D illustration of the project process.

³Ô¹ÏÖ±²¥ The Project

Digital twins are shifting facility management from reactive operations to proactive, data-informed decision-making. By integrating live building data with calibrated virtual models, facility teams gain continuous insight into performance; enabling early fault detection, optimized energy use, and more strategic capital planning.

Rather than relying on periodic audits or static documentation, digital twins support ongoing commissioning, scenario testing, and evidence-based decision-making across the entire building lifecycle.

When deployed effectively, digital twins serve as the analytical backbone for more resilient, efficient, and low-carbon buildings, representing a fundamental shift from managing assets to managing performance.

Active research areas include

  • Cognitive digital twins for fault detection and diagnostics
  • Digital twin-enabled frameworks for Smart and Ongoing Commissioning (SOCx)
  • Large-scale portfolio modelling to support decarbonization planning
  • Integration of heterogeneous data sources, including BIM, IoT, and utility data
  • Surrogate models for rapid simulation
  • Decision-support tools for facility managers operating under uncertainty

Selected Initiatives

Vancouver Hospital Digital Twins 3D model illustration

Vancouver Hospital Digital Twins

Overview

This is a four-year NSERC Alliance-funded grant (2023-2027) to develop a replicable digital twin for hospital central plants. This research focuses on chiller plant and boiler plant optimization for a large hospital in Greater Vancouver.

Key Outcomes

  • 22% electricity savings on chiller plant informed by our digital twin (implemented)
  • *% natural gas savings on boiler plant identified by our digital twin (simulated)

Partners

H.H. Angus & Associates Ltd. and Fraser Health Authority